Are You Praying Right?

Prayer is the only channel of communication between man and God. Only through prayer can our communion with the Lord Jesus Christ be maintained.

When we make a sincere and honest prayer, we open our hearts to the Lord; this is a prayer “in spirit and in truth”, as the Bible refers to it. When we pray this way, we have a better understanding of what our deepest needs are and how much we depend on God. In addition, we develop greater spiritual strength, which guarantees our victory over temptation.

Since prayer is an expression of our soul to the Creator, it need not be refined and sophisticated, or marked by long and difficult words. God knows every detail of who we are and what we are asking - so prayer should be simple and objective, and made in a very humble way.

Prayer is effective when we pray with the absolute assurance that God can hear us. If we do not have this assurance when we are praying, then our words are a waste of time. For this reason, the place we choose to pray must be a place where we can concentrate, making it easier to be wholehearted in what we are doing.

When Jesus taught the Lord’s Prayer to His disciples, He did not intend for us to say it word for word whenever we wanted to speak to God. On the contrary, He was simply leaving a model of how we should communicate with our Heavenly Father. Characteristics of prayer

There are many aspects to prayer, but basically we can divide them into three different parts:

Worship
Request
Thanksgiving

• Worship: Worship is essential to entering into the presence of God in prayer. As we praise, honour and magnify our Lord in an ever-increasing manner, our humility deepens and sincerity of our soul shines through. When we enter into the presence of God through worship, we are acknowledging His Holiness.

• Request: Our requests have no meaning to God unless they have a clear objective. We have to ask ourselves if what we want will bring glory to God, or if it will simply be used to satisfy our lusts and cause an even greater separation between Him and us.

• Thanksgiving: When we thank our Lord, even before we receive the answer we are offering solid proof of a true faith in Him.

“And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” (John 14:13) God the Father answers our requests because of the name of His Son Jesus. This name is the secret behind every miracle!

Bishop Edir Macedo
UCKG founder